At a speech at the Indian Mobile Congress in New Delhi, Reliance chairman and Jio Chief Mukesh Ambani said that India has become the top country in the world as far as consumption of mobile data is concerned. And this, he hinted, has happened in the last couple of years largely because of the entry of Jio in the market. Jio, which started commercial operations in 2016, has been instrumental in spread of 4G in India, and it has also started a fierce price war with other players, leading to the cost of data falling in India in a drastic manner.

“India has moved from 155th rank in mobile broadband penetration to being the Number 1 nation in mobile data consumption in the world in less than two years. This is the fastest transition anywhere in the world from 2G/3G to 4G,” Ambani said.

At the Indian Mobile Congress, telecom companies like Jio, Airtel as well as firms that make networking equipment like Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and Qualcomm are highlighting that the next big thing in cellular connectivity is 5G.

“By 2020, I believe that India will be a fully-4G country and ready for 5G ahead of others,” said Ambani.

The Reliance chief also highlighted that increasingly Indians are acquiring a phone with high-speed internet connectivity and that is changing the way people access content or services. “In the past eight months alone as many as 50 million villagers have got affordable smartphones. For most of them it is not only their pehla phone but also their pehla radio and music player pehla TV, pehla camera, and pehla internet in their lives,” he said.

Currently, Jio has over 250 million subscribers. These people use either a Jio SIM card or a JioPhone, which supports 4G, along with specially-created versions of apps like Facebook and YouTube.